


It's All For the Best (Of Course It Is)

by jillothewisp (abbykate)



Series: Hide and Seek [11]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M, poor sad Sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-08
Updated: 2012-07-08
Packaged: 2017-11-09 11:18:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/454859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abbykate/pseuds/jillothewisp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This isn't fantasy, it isn't, it's science.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's All For the Best (Of Course It Is)

**Author's Note:**

> *Finally* got this one written! SJ and Abby were about to skin me for stalling the series. @___@

It is freezing. Sherlock is standing in a deserted street at three in the morning, staring at the one lighted window in a dark block of flats. He is thinking of Everett's many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. And of John.

Consider: infinite realities, running parallel to one another, in which every possible history plays itself out – an increasingly intriguing idea. Sherlock thinks of the impossible set of circumstances that brought John Watson into his life, made him indispensable, then tore them apart. Alter one variable and they may never have met. Alter another, and they could have had everything. If Everett is to be believed, there are worlds in which _what might have been_ , is.

Theoretically, there is a reality in which the overdose that nearly claimed Sherlock at twenty seven finished the job, erasing him from the world before he was ever aware of John's presence. There is another reality in which the bullet that so narrowly missed John's heart instead pierced it, and he never made it to London, or indeed out of the desert, gone before he hit the sand. Sherlock wonders at times if those realities are superior - after all, if he had never met John Watson, it would never have become necessary to hurt him - but finds he cannot bring himself to prefer them.

(One must also consider that there are realities in which he and John met, but made no impression on each other, though Sherlock finds that concept difficult to conceive of. He cannot imagine a reality in which, knowing of John Watson, he would not do everything in his power to be near him. There may be other versions of himself who could dismiss John as easily as any stranger on the street, and if so he commends them; they are better men than he is.)

There is a reality (perhaps several) in which they are together in every way. In which they make love by night and sleep after in each other's arms. In which each knows every inch of the other's skin as it has been mapped by lips and hands. In which Sherlock possesses John's body and takes it apart and wrecks it and John allows it. In which John takes Sherlock and turns him and turns him inside-out and remakes him and this isn't fantasy, it _isn't_ , it's science. You have to consider all possible histories to be real and occurring simultaneously or the theory falls apart. (And these scenarios, although they may never play out in this universe, are still possible, are they not? Anything is possible...)

It hardly matters. If these alternate worlds are real (doubtful), how to reach them? No, it is only this reality, the one in which Sherlock lives – the one in which he is dead – that should concern him. Is it the best of all possible worlds? Sherlock doesn't think so, but he knows it is not the worst by far. Because in this reality, John Watson is alive and whole and _safe_. And though Sherlock may never touch him in the ways he so desperately wants, the fact remains that John is there to be touched, and for now that is enough because it must be.

There is no theory to help predict the future. At this point, the possibilities in front of Sherlock are endless and unknowable. He may very well go to his death - his true death - tomorrow. In light of that, he thinks he would like very much to see John's face once more. But he has been here for hours, and John has yet to make an appearance at the window. Sherlock has other places to be, appointments to keep, far from here. He hunches his shoulders against the cold. _That's enough, now._

Enough creeping, enough Everett, enough John.

He goes.


End file.
